Indian defence journal SP’s Land Forces has defended the accuracy of a report that the country’s defence ministry has initiated action to cancel all contracts with Denel. The South African arms maker has denied the report and the Indian high commission in Pretoria has indicated the contracts may just have been suspended.
India has cancelled all deals with South African state arms manufacturer, Denel. Indian media reports say the South Asian country’s government decided that the South African company had violated contractual clauses by using undue influence and agents or agency commissions to win a contract for 400 anti-material rifles.
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/ 29 September 2005
Roger Kebble, father of slain mining magnate Brett Kebble, is not planning to step into his son’s shoes. ”I’m just a fairly simple miner. I will stick to my knitting. I don’t think I’m going to step into those shoes,” Kebble told a press conference at his son’s home in Inanda, Johannesburg, on Thursday.
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/ 22 September 2005
South Africa needed more black accountants, President Thabo Mbeki told the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants (Saica) on Wednesday evening. Mbeki was speaking at a dinner marking Saica’s 25th anniversary. ”I think we will agree that we should mobilise more resources” to help train black accountants, Mbeki said.
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/ 16 September 2005
The burst pipe that flooded Meredale in southern Johannesburg with 80-million litres of water in July was the result of corrosion and a 41-year-old bad weld, Rand Water said on Friday. Rand Water chief executive Simo Lushaba said the pipe that burst developed a leak along a seam that had been welded in 1964.
Denel will have to make tough calls if it is to survive, its new chief executive, Shaun Liebenberg, said on Tuesday. Addressing the media in Pretoria on the company’s future plans, he said nothing is sacred and even pet projects such as the Rooivalk attack helicopter will need to perform or be canned.
President Thabo Mbeki called on the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) on Monday to mobilise for the African National Congress in the upcoming local government elections. ”We will, of course, win the upcoming local government elections,” Mbeki told a Cosatu central committee meeting.
The United States army has bought 35 more ”Chubby” mine-hunting systems from Dorbyl RSD. The system, already in use by the US army corps of engineers, detects mines and improvised explosive devices using ground penetrating radar. The deal is thought to be worth about ,5-million (R350-million).
Nearly 300 World War II veterans took a salute from South African National Defence Force chief of corporate services Lieutenant General Themba Matanzima on Sunday at a ceremony at the Rand Regiments’ Memorial in Johannesburg. The veterans, wearing their medals with jacket and tie, marched proudly by, to remember the end of the conflict exactly 60 years before.
No African country is spending enough on defence, a conference on military budgetary processes in Africa heard on Thursday. ”Donor concerns about defence budgets are relative,” African Security Dialogue and Research (ASDR) executive director Eboe Hutchful told a gathering at the African Union conference centre in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.